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January 10, 2013

SINGAPORE - About half the respondents in a survey of married individuals here have considered divorce at some point.

While the finding appears startling, amid rising divorce rates over the past decade, counsellors and observers noted that it reflected reality as people become more open to acknowledging and talking about marriage problems. At the same time, it underlined the resilience of marriages here given that the respondents did not eventually go down that path, they said.

The survey, which involved 408 married individuals in total, was commissioned by Marriage Central - a work group under the National Family Council - and conducted by the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

It was part of a study that aimed to find out "resilience factors that can mitigate marriage crises, as well as acceptance towards the use of social service interventions for marital problems", according to Marriage Central.

IPS research fellow Mathew Mathews, who led the study, noted the survey's small sample size and said it was not meant to be representative of the state of marriages here.

Between February and May, in-depth interviews were conducted on 85 couples and 15 spouses. The researchers found from these that a "good proportion" of this group had contemplated divorce at some point during marriage. This prompted them to conduct a self-administered survey with 108 of the initial respondents, as well as another 300 married persons - from various ages, racial and religious backgrounds - via door-to-door visits.

The result: Almost 52 per cent of the total number of married persons surveyed had considered divorce at some point.

According to the study, common marital stressors were interference by in-laws, sexual impropriety and infidelity, communication and personality difficulties as well as misaligned priorities and different aspirations.

Marriage Central Chairperson Anita Fam said: "The findings from this study, especially the stories of couples who went through very challenging periods but persisted in working on their marriages, show that there is hope for troubled marriages."

Ms Celine Edmund, a marriage counsellor at Singapore Counselling Centre, said she was not surprised at the findings.

"All these marriage problems have been ongoing for a long time - only (the subject) has always been a taboo," she said. "It is coming to the surface because people are more willing to talk about it now."

Nevertheless, she said that "more people still need to know that there is nothing wrong with seeking marriage counselling".

Jalan Besar GRC Member of Parliament Lily Neo, who sits on the Government Parliamentary Committee for Social and Family Development, said she was initially surprised by the survey findings but pointed out that, "despite considerations of divorce, these marriages stayed committed and resilient".

Among other things, the study found that family, friends and religious advisors are often primary informal sources of help that couples reach out to when faced with marital issues. It also found that couples opt for counselling too late into their conflict "which makes progress through counselling difficult".

It recommended that training opportunities be made available for family and friends of couples whose marriages are on the rocks. One complimentary post-marriage counselling session should also be included in marriage preparatory packages, the study suggested.

Ms Edmund felt that the cost of counselling - which can go up to more than S$100 per hour at private counselling centres - could deter couples from seeking help.

America’s demographic squeeze

Double bind

ALTHOUGH America’s fiscal problems are among the worst in the rich world, its policymakers long took comfort that, when it came to demography, its outlook was one of the best. Because Americans have so many babies and welcome so many immigrants, they had more room to deal with the coming burden of pensions and health care for the elderly.

But the savage recession of 2007-09 and its aftermath have not just deepened America’s fiscal hole; they have weakened those demographic advantages. America’s fertility rate has been falling since 2007, as has net immigration. Compounding this, the share of the population that is active in the labour force has slipped, both because of ageing and because of the recession’s lingering effects.

On December 12th the Census Bureau said America’s projected population would rise 27% to 400m by 2050. That is 9% less than it projected for that year back in 2008. Those 65 and over will grow to 22% of the population by 2060 from 14% now, while the working-age population slips to 57% from 63%.

The new projections, based on the 2010 census, are based on recent trends in fertility and immigration. The number of babies born per 1,000 women of childbearing age (also called the “general” fertility rate) fell to 63 in the 12 months that ended in June of this year, the lowest since at least 1920, and well below the recent high of 69 recorded in 2007. That is partly because the average age of women of childbearing age has increased. The “total” fertility rate adjusts for the age of the population and extrapolates how many children each woman will have over her lifetime. This, too, has fallen, and at 1.9 it is below the replacement rate of 2.1. America’s fertility rate is still higher than the average for the OECD, but has fallen sharply since 2007.

Immigration has been an important component of America’s population growth, thanks both to the influx of new people and to their tendency to have more babies. Those advantages, too, have started to dwindle. A report by the Pew Research Centre notes that the birth rate has fallen especially sharply for immigrant women, to 88 per 1,000 women of reproductive age in 2010 from the recent peak of 102, though it remains well above that of American-born women. The Census Bureau reckons that net migration in 2011 was only 700,000, down 28% from 2006 and the lowest for at least a decade.

The main reason for the fall in both fertility and immigration is the economy. There are fewer opportunities on construction sites and elsewhere for immigrants. Children are expensive, so couples delay having them when their prospects dim. Gretchen Livingston, a demographer at Pew, notes that the only state in which births rose in 2009 was North Dakota, largely bypassed by recession, whereas they fell especially sharply in devastated Arizona, Nevada and Florida. This means that when the economy recovers, so should fertility. Policymakers have yet to panic; the Social Security Commission, which manages America’s public pension system, reckons fertility and immigration will bounce back in the next few years.

This may be too sanguine. Structural as well as cyclical factors are at work. Mark Mather of the Population Reference Bureau, a research outfit, notes that couples have been getting married ever later in life; in 2011 the median age at first marriage was 28.7 and 26.5 for men and women respectively, the highest on record. A rising share of women in their early 40s are childless. In this respect America may be following the experience of Europe.

Though it will be two decades before today’s lower fertility affects the ranks of workers, America can ill afford it. Growth in its labour force has slowed dramatically since the recession; in November it was only 1% larger than at the end of 2007, a period in which the working-age population grew by 5%. This is partly because of the weak economy, which has driven many people into early retirement, others on to disability payments, and some out of the job hunt altogether. Nevertheless, the Congressional Budget Office sees the potential labour force (that is, after excluding purely cyclical influences) as growing by only 0.5% a year in the coming decade, largely because the population is ageing. That puts ever more of the burden of supporting old-age benefits on a stagnant population of workers.

For politicians struggling over the deficit, these trends point to some remedies. One would be gradually to raise the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare over coming decades, encouraging Americans to work longer. Another would be to allow more immigration. Neither would solve America’s immediate deficit problem; but they would make the long-term challenge more manageable.

October 16, 2012

Boss who would speak up for subordinates

ESM Goh recalls how Pillay reversed the PM's decision

Published on Sep 28, 2012

Mr Pillay was honoured at a Sinda dinner to celebrate his Order of Nila Utama (First Class) - this year's top National Day Award. He was once Mr Goh's superior at the Ministry of Finance. -- ST PHOTO: CHEW SENG KIM

By Kezia Toh

HE WAS the boss who would speak up for his subordinates, even if it meant reversing the Prime Minister's decision.

This was how Emeritus Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong remembered Mr J. Y. Pillay, 78, who was his superior at the Ministry of Finance.

Mr Goh recounted the snippet yesterday at a dinner organised by the Singapore Indian Development Association (Sinda) to celebrate Mr Pillay's Order of Nila Utama (First Class) - this year's top National Day Award. Mr Pillay was the first president of Sinda.

In his speech, Mr Goh recalled how Mr Pillay had nominated him for a master's at the Centre for Development Economics in Williams College in the United States.

When he returned, he was told by then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew that "he was looking for a general factotum, you know, an errand boy to do all kinds of work". "At the end of the interview, he said that he would arrange for me to be his Principal Private Secretary," he said.

When Mr Goh reported this to Mr Pillay, he was "visibly annoyed", saying that "he did not send me to Williams College only to lose me".

Mr Pillay would later speak to then Minister for Finance Lim Kim San, and a few days later, the matter was settled. He would remain in the Economic Planning Unitinstead.

"My respect for him went up a few notches," said Mr Goh. "Here was a civil servant who dared reverse the Prime Minister's decision."

Mr Pillay was awarded the order - conferred by the President on the advice of the Prime Minister - for his outstanding work as a public servant as well as his contributions to the private sector.

His distinguished career spanning 34 years in the civil service gave him a key role in helping to forge Singapore's fortunes alongside the Old Guard. Mr Pillay helped shape the economy during modern Singapore's early years, from managing the withdrawal of British troops in the early 1970s to formulating the country's tax policy.

In the civil service, he took charge of several ministries, including Finance and National Development. He was managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation.

He also built Singapore Airlines (SIA) from a staff of just 12 in 1972 to a world-class carrier.

After retiring from the civil service in 1995, he went on to oversee the creation of the Singapore Exchange (SGX) in 1999 from the merger of the Stock Exchange of Singapore and the Singapore International Monetary Exchange. He continued to chair the SGX until 2010, and still plays an active role in public life, chairing the Council of Presidential Advisers and the board at Tiger Airways.

Said Mr Goh: "He was a great teacher, sharp, analytical though a little impatient at times. I have often wondered how my life would have turned out if Joe had not been there at my formative working years.

How do Americans spend their money? And how do budgets change across the income spectrum?

The graph below answers these questions. It shows average household spending patterns for U.S. households in three income categories — one just below the poverty line, one at the middle of the income distribution and one at the top of the distribution.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Credit: Lam Thuy Vo / NPR

Both the similarities and the differences are striking.

Everyone devotes a huge chunk of their budget to housing, for example. Poor, middle class and rich families spend similar shares of their budgets on clothing and shoes, and on food outside the home.

But poor families spend a much larger share of their budget on basic necessities such as food at home, utilities and health care. Rich families are able to devote a much bigger chunk of their spending to education, and a much, much bigger share to saving for retirement. (The retirement line includes contributions to Social Security and to private retirement plans, by the way.)

August 07, 2012

As the rat race gets hotter and tempers get shorter, a way to stay cool is to run at your pace

By Leslie Koh, The Straits Times, 14 Jul 2012

SINGAPORE, it seems, is getting angrier and angrier.

Take a look at the exchanges online, or recall the recent clashes between commuters on buses and trains, and you'll notice what appears to be a trend of volatile tempers and deepening rage, whether it's directed at the Government, foreigners or a fellow passenger.

Singaporeans are angry with the Government for - quote, unquote - messing up public transport, allowing too many foreigners to come in, and making homes so expensive.

They're also increasingly resentful of foreigners for coming in and stealing their jobs, their university places and their scholarships.

And they're increasingly frustrated with one another for taking their precious seats on the MRT, and for deigning to set up elderly facilities in their void decks.

And they're angry because the authorities don't seem to take their complaints about these seriously enough - or because they answer their questions with a question.

As more than one observer has commented, 'we are an angry society'.

What is happening? Why is a society that prides itself on tolerance and courtesy getting more easily worked up these days? Why does the little red dot seem to be getting redder?

Many lay the blame at the Government's door. After all, the influx of foreign workers and overcrowding on trains and buses can be linked to government policy.

You could also attribute the strong sentiments to a boiling over of accumulated frustration, or a change in the relations between the Government and the governed.

Singapore isn't unique in that sense. A deepening frustration with rulers has prompted protests around the world, from Occupy Wall Street in America to the Arab Spring in the Middle East, and Bersih across the Causeway.

But that would not fully explain the intensity of the rage that seems to emerge when something goes wrong in Singapore, or when an incident arises reminding the populace of a sensitive subject, whether it's a lax immigration policy, wage gap or social injustice.

Neither would it account for the bitterness of the vitriol sometimes seen in online as well as verbal exchanges.

Is there something else that is driving the anger?

A look at the touchy topics seems to suggest a common thread running through them.

The resentment against foreigners essentially boils down to a competition for jobs. The frustration over the location of facilities in backyards could be simplified as competition for land and personal space. The indignation of not having one's voice and opinion heard, or being 'engaged' enough, could be likened to a competition for attention.

And the anger against fellow citizens sometimes comes down to competition for, well, a seat on the train. Or a place in the queue.

Of course, competition isn't a new thing to Singaporeans. But it had not been so intense before.

Singaporeans have always had to compete for jobs, but they've never had so hard a time. Not only do they now have to compete with one another for the best positions, but they also have to fend off competition from abroad.

They've never had to compete so much for space, whether it's in their shrinking backyards, on the bus, or in school or university.

You could blame some of it on government policy, but a large part of it is undeniably a natural result of living in a city-state.

With the pace of life accelerating, the competition for jobs, land, space and time is taking a greater toll than before. In other words, the rat race is getting a lot harder. Singaporeans are finding they have to run faster on the treadmill just to stay in place.

The intensifying competition could be one of the sources of the me-first attitude and the rising anger, much of which ends up directed against the marshals organising the race, the new contestants hoping to join in, and even fellow competitors.

Is this modern-day race inevitable? Or is there another way?

Some would argue that the nation - here they really mean the Government - has a choice.

It could relax in its pursuit of economic goals, rein in population growth and immigration, improve public transport and ensure that land development leaves enough green spaces. Certainly, this is something worth thinking about in policymaking - how to make the little red dot grow bigger, not redder.

But with just 700 or so sq km and the ever-growing external pressure from globalisation, there is surely a limit to what the authorities can do.

Some have argued that individuals can choose to drop out of the rat race. Parents can opt not to push their children to qualify for an elite school. Homebuyers can pick a smaller flat. People can consider a simpler lifestyle. All these would translate into less worry about getting the best tuition, or striving for more pay and promotions.

But these options come at a price. Opting out of a good school could risk a child's future. Taking it easier in a job could mean losing it altogether. Buying a small home would mean a smaller asset to cash in for retirement later.

Some would surely find the costs too high. With everyone running ahead, getting left behind would mean compromising on the quality of life or giving up hopes for a better one. Less pay, less luxuries, less achievements.

Others may deem the choices simply irresponsible. Parents, for example, would not want to risk their children's future. There is, after all, a difference between kiasu (scared to lose) and kiasi (scared to die).

Some will argue that there are also instances in which choices aren't available, at least not in a city-state. You can't choose which bus or train to take to avoid the crowds, or which park to take refuge in for a spot of solitude.

There are some, however, who have taken the plunge, quitting high-paying jobs for a simpler lifestyle or more time with the family. Ultimately, it is probably inevitable that Singaporeans will have to stay in the rat race. But maybe - just maybe - it is possible to run at your own pace.

40 years of container shipping

Launch of then-controversial mode of shipping was milestone for S'pore

Last year, volumes at the port reached more than 29 million TEUs, making Singapore the world's second-busiest container port after Shanghai. Home-grown technology like Portnet, a one-stop 24-hour paperless electronic link, has also given Singapore an edge over its regional rivals. -- ST PHOTOS: TED CHEN

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By ALVIN FOO

IT HAPPENED 40 years ago, but PSA Corp operations supervisor Martin Verghese, 68, still remembers the day vividly.

It was June 23, 1972, and Singapore was about to welcome the first all-container ship to its port.

Mr Verghese was on edge: He was among the initial batch of crane operators who would be unloading the vessel at PSA's new Tanjong Pagar Terminal.

He said: 'Everybody was eagerly awaiting the ship's arrival - the mood was tense. It was a significant milestone for Singapore.'

The MV Nihon had made its maiden voyage with 300 containers from Rotterdam to Singapore non-stop to be on time for the opening of the new port.

Captain Mervin Lewis, the senior PSA pilot who guided the MV Nihon into Singapore, recalled: 'We realised that something special was taking place that day - we had a glimpse of the future.'

Fast forward to today - the 40th anniversary of container shipping - and more than 404 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of containers have been handled in Singapore. Placed end to end, they would span the distance from Earth to the Moon more than 6.4 times.

The idea of container shipping came from American entrepreneur Malcolm McLean, when he was watching dock workers manually load cotton onto vessels.

As he recalled in his memoirs: 'Suddenly, the idea came to me. Wouldn't it be great if my trailer could simply be lifted up and placed on the ship without the contents being touched?'

Initially, converted truck trailers were used, evolving into today's containers, known as TEUs.

PSA International group chairman Fock Siew Wah told The Straits Times: 'The celebration reminds us of the transformational effect of a bold decision taken more than 40 years ago.'

He was referring to the decision of then PSA chairman Howe Yoon Chong to build Singapore's first container berth, which became operational in 1972.

Constructing a container port was controversial in the 1960s, as shipping experts were sceptical of the demand, and no container ship operator had made a commitment to building such vessels for the Europe-Far East run. But today, Mr Fock said: 'Singapore is a leading global container hub port and the pride of our nation, fulfilling its vital role of facilitating world commerce and trade.'

It did not take Singapore too long to make its mark.

Business was slow in the 1970s, but trade rose in the 1980s.

In 1982, Singapore achieved one million TEUs in a single year for the first time, and became the world's busiest port by shipping tonnage. In 1990, it exceeded five million TEUs and became the world's busiest container port for the first time, in terms of TEUs handled. By 2000, it was handling 17 million TEUs a year.

Last year, volumes reached over 29 million TEUs, making Singapore the world's second-busiest container port after Shanghai.

Along the way, home-grown technology has given Singapore an edge over its regional rivals.

The innovations include Portnet, a one-stop 24-hour paperless electronic link for the port and shipping community, introduced in 1984. Another is Citos, a planning system that coordinates and integrates all PSA port operations.

The accolades have been numerous, with PSA clinching Best Container Terminal in Asia for 23 years at the annual Asian Freight & Supply Chain Awards.

Economists note that container shipping has become a highly significant part of Singapore's economy and the backbone of the maritime sector in the region.

CIMB regional economist Song Seng Wun said: 'Despite pressure coming from other ports, Singapore will still be important as a key regional player. That's unlikely to change in the near term.

'The business will still expand as consumption and two-way trade is growing in this region. The only question is space and capacity constraints.'

But Singapore is not resting on its laurels.

Two new phases of the Pasir Panjang Terminal are being developed to boost handling capacity to 50 million TEUs by 2018. PSA is also working on automated guided vehicles for future container terminals - to reduce manpower and improve port productivity.

June 29, 2012

When money gets in the way

Rich-poor gap is a source of simmering social tension

People eating while queueing at the launch of a condominium project. Some were merely keeping a place for prospective buyers who had paid them to wait on their behalf. And in another example of how money creates separate worlds for the rich and the poor, a soon-to-be-opened private hospital in Singapore provides this suite (above), which is larger than a five-room HDB flat. -- ST PHOTOS: DESMOND WEE

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By Jeremy Au Yong, Political Correspondent

IT IS perhaps a sign of the times that a government minister has to address the traffic offence of a single individual.

The scrutiny plastic surgeon Woffles Wu received this week would have been unimaginable just 10 years ago. But now, it comes as no surprise that many are calling on the authorities to hit him hard.

A large part of this backlash lies in a perceived sense of injustice. In many cases, a country's laws are designed to deter, rehabilitate and incapacitate criminals for retribution as well as to lay down a moral marker for behaviour that a society frowns on.

However, Wu's $1,000 fine, for abetting an employee to give false information over a speeding offence, is seen as too small a part of his income to fulfil any of these functions. Instead, it becomes a mere fee that a rich man can pay for the right to do what he wants.

The backlash also reflects simmering antipathy between the haves and the have-nots.

If a delivery man were fined a measly $10 for a similar offence, perhaps few would bat an eyelid. Here, Wu's status as a member of Singapore's rich and famous set is working against him. And it is not just a case of 'tall poppy syndrome', though that surely plays a part; this seems symptomatic of a larger strain on social cohesion.

This is, of course, not a uniquely Singaporean problem. Societies all over the world are grappling with the heightened social tension arising from growing income inequality.

Some have concluded that inequality is an inescapable part of a globalised world and therefore a new reality that everyone needs to come to terms with.

However, political philosopher Michael Sandel has argued in a new book that even if the wall between rich and poor cannot be completely torn down, society can at the very least stop adding more bricks.

In his book What Money Can't Buy, Professor Sandel argues that macro-trends like globalisation are not the only forces pushing people apart. At fault are also national and perhaps even local-level decisions on how to run schools, hospitals and even highways.

He says that economic principles have increasingly crept into all aspects of everyday life. And when people can pay for the privilege to flout social norms that others abide by - such as to cut queues or pollute the environment - then they go ahead and do so without regard for right and wrong.

And he worries that when everything can be bought with money, the rich can more easily differentiate and separate themselves from the poor. The less the classes mix, the more foreign each side becomes to the other.

Sandel calls it the Skyboxification of American Life, named after the luxury suites now in almost every US sports venue. Where sports used to bring people together regardless of class to support a common cause, these suites mean the rich can now do so at a healthy distance from the working class.

Thankfully, Singapore still has some common spaces where rich and poor can mix, but these are becoming increasingly rare.

The country does seem to be headed down the same slippery slope the US is on.

Like in the US, there are theme parks in Singapore that allow visitors to skip the normal queues for a fee. Less formally, there is also a growing market for queue-sitters. People are paying hundreds of dollars to students to hold a place in queue for them for anything from a new iPad to a condominium.

Similarly, our economic growth has included a multitude of premium services like private banking, private hospitals and private schools that provide avenues for the rich to set themselves apart from the poor.

Indeed, this has not been an overnight process but the end result of years of everyone trying to maximise economic value through price differentiation, which in turn has led to an increased social gap.

The increasing demand for places in local international schools provides a particularly relevant example.

A Straits Times report in February found that three local international schools - Anglo-Chinese School (ACS) International, Hwa Chong International and St Joseph's Institution (SJI) International - were expanding facilities to take in more students.

Singaporeans and permanent residents make up half the students in ACS and Hwa Chong international schools, and 60 per cent of those at SJI. Officials from the schools attributed the demand from Singaporean students to the brand names, alternative curricula and smaller class sizes.

The Government has always maintained that it prefers Singaporean children to attend local schools for the purpose of building national identity and social cohesion.

That meant local students could not enrol in an international school except under special circumstances, such as having grown up abroad.

That works well from a social cohesion point of view but is value-destroying from an economic point of view. Value-destroying because there clearly was demand for these schools from wealthy parents.

In 2004, brand name schools were given the green light to start international schools that were open to locals. This was to attract foreign students and to give Singaporeans more secondary school choices.

That seems to have met some pent-up demand and increased the size of the economic pie but it also undermined the role of a local school as a melting pot.

None of this is to say that the economic way is inherently bad or to suggest that all policies should be totally egalitarian. There will be times - even possibly in the examples above - when it makes sense to put a price on a social good.

It is difficult to just lay down a firm law on how we decide what to keep sacred. In a country with limited resources, trade-offs will always need to be made.

Perhaps we can start with the non-negotiables, draw up a list of areas where money cannot be allowed to differentiate.

On this list already are National Service and the National Day Parade. The Government has rightly decided that such emblems of nationhood should not be up for sale. Voluntary conscription might lead to only the poor defending the nation and the sale of NDP tickets might mean only the rich make it to the floating platform.

In other areas, there is a need to make sure that the impact on social cohesion, and not just economic value, is factored into decision-making. We cannot preserve every hawker centre or every public park. But when we decide that one should make way, let us do it having taken into account that we may be destroying something money cannot buy.

June 02, 2012

'Yes, in my backyard'

Group of 500 residents want Govt to stick to plans to build rehab centres

By Robin Chan

A GROUP of 500 residents in Mountbatten are fighting back against their neighbours' opposition to plans for rehabilitation centres for the elderly to be built in their estate.

In what appears to be a twist to the not-in-my-backyard (Nimby) syndrome, they have petitioned the Government to stick with its plans to build the centres in the void decks of Blocks 10 and 11 on Jalan Batu.

Made up mostly of elderly folk, the group includes residents who live in these two blocks. Their petition comes about a month after a group of 130 residents had petitioned for the facilities to be located elsewhere.

The second group made their move fearing that the authorities would drop the plans or build a centre over a communal fountain - as the first group had suggested - where many like to gather.

Some of them were also frustrated by the first petition, and believe it came from younger neighbours who did not want their void deck to be used, even though it would take up only about 30 per cent of the space.

Housewife Gurdip Kaur, 55, whose son has been going to a temporary rehabilitation centre at Block 12 after being injured in a car accident, agreed. 'There are more old folk here than children,' she told The Straits Times. 'If the Government is doing something nice for us, we should let them.'

If built, the new centres will be about nine times the size of the temporary one, and have equipment to aid recovery from stroke or Parkinson's disease.

The neighbourhood rift had started last month, when about 130 residents who live in Blocks 10 and 11 submitted a petition to Mountbatten MP Lim Biow Chuan. Their concerns included the safety of children playing at the void decks, construction noise, and the likelihood of the resale price of their flats dropping.

They then proposed alternative venues for the centres: a nearby waste-bin collection centre, a central fountain next to Block 10, or the void deck of Block 1 or 14.

But the ceilings at Blocks 1 and 14 are believed to be too low to accommodate the centres, while the fountain is a popular gathering place for residents. The other blocks do not have void decks.

The petition not only fuelled national debate over the Nimby syndrome, but also angered other Jalan Batu residents who wanted the centres built in the void decks.

Hearing their concerns, retired businessman Michael Tan and a few friends in the neighbourhood began to gather support for the pro-centre petition. Said the 72-year-old, who has lived there for 16 years: 'The old folks here are unable to speak for themselves and the estate, so somebody has got to do something.'

The signatories include residents of Blocks 10 and 11, but it is not known how many of them live in these two blocks.

Mr Lim, their MP, has submitted both petitions to the Ministry of Health, which he said is still reviewing the case. He said the Government would take into account the views of the 'silent majority' as well.

For older residents like Madam Teh Kar Gim, 84, the greatest fear is that the fountain gets removed.

Said her neighbour Madam Kong Mei Lan, 74: 'It is such a nice place. Why would they want to build a centre right over that?'

MAY: About 40 people submit a petition against plans for a 260-bed nursing home facing three blocks of flats on a football field at Bishan Street 13. The Ministry of Health is still considering the feedback.

April 30, 2012

In part, Asia was attractive because the semiskilled workers there were cheaper. But that wasn’t driving Apple. For technology companies, the cost of labor is minimal compared with the expense of buying parts and managing supply chains that bring together components and services from hundreds of companies.

For Mr. Cook, the focus on Asia “came down to two things,” said one former high-ranking Apple executive. Factories in Asia “can scale up and down faster” and “Asian supply chains have surpassed what’s in the U.S.” The result is that “we can’t compete at this point,” the executive said.

The impact of such advantages became obvious as soon as Mr. Jobs demanded glass screens in 2007.

For years, cellphone makers had avoided using glass because it required precision in cutting and grinding that was extremely difficult to achieve. Apple had already selected an American company, Corning Inc., to manufacture large panes of strengthened glass. But figuring out how to cut those panes into millions of iPhone screens required finding an empty cutting plant, hundreds of pieces of glass to use in experiments and an army of midlevel engineers. It would cost a fortune simply to prepare.

Then a bid for the work arrived from a Chinese factory.

When an Apple team visited, the Chinese plant’s owners were already constructing a new wing. “This is in case you give us the contract,” the manager said, according to a former Apple executive. The Chinese government had agreed to underwrite costs for numerous industries, and those subsidies had trickled down to the glass-cutting factory. It had a warehouse filled with glass samples available to Apple, free of charge. The owners made engineers available at almost no cost. They had built on-site dormitories so employees would be available 24 hours a day.

The Chinese plant got the job.

....

Foxconn Technology has dozens of facilities in Asia and Eastern Europe, and in Mexico and Brazil, and it assembles an estimated 40 percent of the world’s consumer electronics for customers like Amazon, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Nintendo, Nokia, Samsung and Sony.

“They could hire 3,000 people overnight,” said Jennifer Rigoni, who was Apple’s worldwide supply demand manager until 2010, but declined to discuss specifics of her work. “What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms?”

In mid-2007, after a month of experimentation, Apple’s engineers finally perfected a method for cutting strengthened glass so it could be used in the iPhone’s screen. The first truckloads of cut glass arrived at Foxconn City in the dead of night, according to the former Apple executive. That’s when managers woke thousands of workers, who crawled into their uniforms — white and black shirts for men, red for women — and quickly lined up to assemble, by hand, the phones. Within three months, Apple had sold one million iPhones. Since then, Foxconn has assembled over 200 million more.

...

Another critical advantage for Apple was that China provided engineers at a scale the United States could not match. Apple’s executives had estimated that about 8,700 industrial engineers were needed to oversee and guide the 200,000 assembly-line workers eventually involved in manufacturing iPhones. The company’s analysts had forecast it would take as long as nine months to find that many qualified engineers in the United States.

In China, it took 15 days.

...

It is hard to estimate how much more it would cost to build iPhones in the United States. However, various academics and manufacturing analysts estimate that because labor is such a small part of technology manufacturing, paying American wages would add up to $65 to each iPhone’s expense. Since Apple’s profits are often hundreds of dollars per phone, building domestically, in theory, would still give the company a healthy reward.

But such calculations are, in many respects, meaningless because building the iPhone in the United States would demand much more than hiring Americans — it would require transforming the national and global economies. Apple executives believe there simply aren’t enough American workers with the skills the company needs or factories with sufficient speed and flexibility. Other companies that work with Apple, like Corning, also say they must go abroad.

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THE iECONOMY

How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work

Donald Chan/Reuters

People flooded Foxconn Technology with résumés at a 2010 job fair in Henan Province, China.

Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.

The president’s question touched upon a central conviction at Apple. It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.

Apple has become one of the best-known, most admired and most imitated companies on earth, in part through an unrelenting mastery of global operations. Last year, it earned over $400,000 in profit per employee, more than Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil or Google.

However, what has vexed Mr. Obama as well as economists and policy makers is that Apple — and many of its high-technology peers — are not nearly as avid in creating American jobs as other famous companies were in their heydays.

Apple employs 43,000 people in the United States and 20,000 overseas, a small fraction of the over 400,000 American workers at General Motors in the 1950s, or the hundreds of thousands at General Electric in the 1980s. Many more people work for Apple’s contractors: an additional 700,000 people engineer, build and assemble iPads, iPhones and Apple’s other products. But almost none of them work in the United States. Instead, they work for foreign companies in Asia, Europe and elsewhere, at factories that almost all electronics designers rely upon to build their wares.

“Apple’s an example of why it’s so hard to create middle-class jobs in the U.S. now,” said Jared Bernstein, who until last year was an economic adviser to the White House.

“If it’s the pinnacle of capitalism, we should be worried.”

Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhonemanufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”

Similar stories could be told about almost any electronics company — and outsourcing has also become common in hundreds of industries, including accounting, legal services, banking, auto manufacturing and pharmaceuticals.

But while Apple is far from alone, it offers a window into why the success of some prominent companies has not translated into large numbers of domestic jobs. What’s more, the company’s decisions pose broader questions about what corporate America owes Americans as the global and national economies are increasingly intertwined.

“Companies once felt an obligation to support American workers, even when it wasn’t the best financial choice,” said Betsey Stevenson, the chief economist at the Labor Department until last September. “That’s disappeared. Profits and efficiency have trumped generosity.”

Companies and other economists say that notion is naïve. Though Americans are among the most educated workers in the world, the nation has stopped training enough people in the mid-level skills that factories need, executives say.

To thrive, companies argue they need to move work where it can generate enough profits to keep paying for innovation. Doing otherwise risks losing even more American jobs over time, as evidenced by the legions of once-proud domestic manufacturers — including G.M. and others — that have shrunk as nimble competitors have emerged.

Apple was provided with extensive summaries of The New York Times’s reporting for this article, but the company, which has a reputation for secrecy, declined to comment.

This article is based on interviews with more than three dozen current and former Apple employees and contractors — many of whom requested anonymity to protect their jobs — as well as economists, manufacturing experts, international trade specialists, technology analysts, academic researchers, employees at Apple’s suppliers, competitors and corporate partners, and government officials.

Privately, Apple executives say the world is now such a changed place that it is a mistake to measure a company’s contribution simply by tallying its employees — though they note that Apple employs more workers in the United States than ever before.

They say Apple’s success has benefited the economy by empowering entrepreneurs and creating jobs at companies like cellular providers and businesses shipping Apple products. And, ultimately, they say curing unemployment is not their job.

“We sell iPhones in over a hundred countries,” a current Apple executive said. “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.”

‘I Want a Glass Screen’

In 2007, a little over a month before the iPhone was scheduled to appear in stores, Mr. Jobs beckoned a handful of lieutenants into an office. For weeks, he had been carrying a prototype of the device in his pocket.

Mr. Jobs angrily held up his iPhone, angling it so everyone could see the dozens of tiny scratches marring its plastic screen, according to someone who attended the meeting. He then pulled his keys from his jeans.

People will carry this phone in their pocket, he said. People also carry their keys in their pocket. “I won’t sell a product that gets scratched,” he said tensely. The only solution was using unscratchable glass instead. “I want a glass screen, and I want it perfect in six weeks.”

After one executive left that meeting, he booked a flight to Shenzhen, China. If Mr. Jobs wanted perfect, there was nowhere else to go.

For over two years, the company had been working on a project — code-named Purple 2 — that presented the same questions at every turn: how do you completely reimagine the cellphone? And how do you design it at the highest quality — with an unscratchable screen, for instance — while also ensuring that millions can be manufactured quickly and inexpensively enough to earn a significant profit?

The answers, almost every time, were found outside the United States. Though components differ between versions, all iPhones contain hundreds of parts, an estimated 90 percent of which are manufactured abroad. Advanced semiconductors have come from Germany and Taiwan, memory from Korea and Japan, display panels and circuitry from Korea and Taiwan, chipsets from Europe and rare metals from Africa and Asia. And all of it is put together in China.

In its early days, Apple usually didn’t look beyond its own backyard for manufacturing solutions. A few years after Apple began building the Macintosh in 1983, for instance, Mr. Jobs bragged that it was “a machine that is made in America.” In 1990, while Mr. Jobs was running NeXT, which was eventually bought by Apple, the executive told a reporter that “I’m as proud of the factory as I am of the computer.” As late as 2002, top Apple executives occasionally drove two hours northeast of their headquarters to visit the company’s iMac plant in Elk Grove, Calif.

But by 2004, Apple had largely turned to foreign manufacturing. Guiding that decision was Apple’s operations expert, Timothy D. Cook, who replaced Mr. Jobs as chief executive last August, six weeks before Mr. Jobs’s death. Most other American electronics companies had already gone abroad, and Apple, which at the time was struggling, felt it had to grasp every advantage.

In part, Asia was attractive because the semiskilled workers there were cheaper. But that wasn’t driving Apple. For technology companies, the cost of labor is minimal compared with the expense of buying parts and managing supply chains that bring together components and services from hundreds of companies.

For Mr. Cook, the focus on Asia “came down to two things,” said one former high-ranking Apple executive. Factories in Asia “can scale up and down faster” and “Asian supply chains have surpassed what’s in the U.S.” The result is that “we can’t compete at this point,” the executive said.

The impact of such advantages became obvious as soon as Mr. Jobs demanded glass screens in 2007.

For years, cellphone makers had avoided using glass because it required precision in cutting and grinding that was extremely difficult to achieve. Apple had already selected an American company, Corning Inc., to manufacture large panes of strengthened glass. But figuring out how to cut those panes into millions of iPhone screens required finding an empty cutting plant, hundreds of pieces of glass to use in experiments and an army of midlevel engineers. It would cost a fortune simply to prepare.

Then a bid for the work arrived from a Chinese factory.

When an Apple team visited, the Chinese plant’s owners were already constructing a new wing. “This is in case you give us the contract,” the manager said, according to a former Apple executive. The Chinese government had agreed to underwrite costs for numerous industries, and those subsidies had trickled down to the glass-cutting factory. It had a warehouse filled with glass samples available to Apple, free of charge. The owners made engineers available at almost no cost. They had built on-site dormitories so employees would be available 24 hours a day.

The Chinese plant got the job.

“The entire supply chain is in China now,” said another former high-ranking Apple executive. “You need a thousand rubber gaskets? That’s the factory next door. You need a million screws? That factory is a block away. You need that screw made a little bit different? It will take three hours.”

In Foxconn City

An eight-hour drive from that glass factory is a complex, known informally as Foxconn City, where the iPhone is assembled. To Apple executives, Foxconn City was further evidence that China could deliver workers — and diligence — that outpaced their American counterparts.

That’s because nothing like Foxconn City exists in the United States.

The facility has 230,000 employees, many working six days a week, often spending up to 12 hours a day at the plant. Over a quarter of Foxconn’s work force lives in company barracks and many workers earn less than $17 a day. When one Apple executive arrived during a shift change, his car was stuck in a river of employees streaming past. “The scale is unimaginable,” he said.

Foxconn employs nearly 300 guards to direct foot traffic so workers are not crushed in doorway bottlenecks. The facility’s central kitchen cooks an average of three tons of pork and 13 tons of rice a day. While factories are spotless, the air inside nearby teahouses is hazy with the smoke and stench of cigarettes.

Foxconn Technology has dozens of facilities in Asia and Eastern Europe, and in Mexico and Brazil, and it assembles an estimated 40 percent of the world’s consumer electronics for customers like Amazon, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Nintendo, Nokia, Samsung and Sony.

“They could hire 3,000 people overnight,” said Jennifer Rigoni, who was Apple’s worldwide supply demand manager until 2010, but declined to discuss specifics of her work. “What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms?”

In mid-2007, after a month of experimentation, Apple’s engineers finally perfected a method for cutting strengthened glass so it could be used in the iPhone’s screen. The first truckloads of cut glass arrived at Foxconn City in the dead of night, according to the former Apple executive. That’s when managers woke thousands of workers, who crawled into their uniforms — white and black shirts for men, red for women — and quickly lined up to assemble, by hand, the phones. Within three months, Apple had sold one million iPhones. Since then, Foxconn has assembled over 200 million more.

Foxconn, in statements, declined to speak about specific clients.

“Any worker recruited by our firm is covered by a clear contract outlining terms and conditions and by Chinese government law that protects their rights,” the company wrote. Foxconn “takes our responsibility to our employees very seriously and we work hard to give our more than one million employees a safe and positive environment.”

The company disputed some details of the former Apple executive’s account, and wrote that a midnight shift, such as the one described, was impossible “because we have strict regulations regarding the working hours of our employees based on their designated shifts, and every employee has computerized timecards that would bar them from working at any facility at a time outside of their approved shift.” The company said that all shifts began at either 7 a.m. or 7 p.m., and that employees receive at least 12 hours’ notice of any schedule changes.

Foxconn employees, in interviews, have challenged those assertions.

Another critical advantage for Apple was that China provided engineers at a scale the United States could not match. Apple’s executives had estimated that about 8,700 industrial engineers were needed to oversee and guide the 200,000 assembly-line workers eventually involved in manufacturing iPhones. The company’s analysts had forecast it would take as long as nine months to find that many qualified engineers in the United States.

In China, it took 15 days.

Companies like Apple “say the challenge in setting up U.S. plants is finding a technical work force,” said Martin Schmidt, associate provost at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In particular, companies say they need engineers with more than high school, but not necessarily a bachelor’s degree. Americans at that skill level are hard to find, executives contend. “They’re good jobs, but the country doesn’t have enough to feed the demand,” Mr. Schmidt said.

Some aspects of the iPhone are uniquely American. The device’s software, for instance, and its innovative marketing campaigns were largely created in the United States. Apple recently built a $500 million data center in North Carolina. Crucial semiconductors inside the iPhone 4 and 4S are manufactured in an Austin, Tex., factory by Samsung, of South Korea.

But even those facilities are not enormous sources of jobs. Apple’s North Carolina center, for instance, has only 100 full-time employees. The Samsung plant has an estimated 2,400 workers.

“If you scale up from selling one million phones to 30 million phones, you don’t really need more programmers,” said Jean-Louis Gassée, who oversaw product development and marketing for Apple until he left in 1990. “All these new companies — Facebook, Google, Twitter — benefit from this. They grow, but they don’t really need to hire much.”

It is hard to estimate how much more it would cost to build iPhones in the United States. However, various academics and manufacturing analysts estimate that because labor is such a small part of technology manufacturing, paying American wages would add up to $65 to each iPhone’s expense. Since Apple’s profits are often hundreds of dollars per phone, building domestically, in theory, would still give the company a healthy reward.

But such calculations are, in many respects, meaningless because building the iPhone in the United States would demand much more than hiring Americans — it would require transforming the national and global economies. Apple executives believe there simply aren’t enough American workers with the skills the company needs or factories with sufficient speed and flexibility. Other companies that work with Apple, like Corning, also say they must go abroad.

Manufacturing glass for the iPhone revived a Corning factory in Kentucky, and today, much of the glass in iPhones is still made there. After the iPhone became a success, Corning received a flood of orders from other companies hoping to imitate Apple’s designs. Its strengthened glass sales have grown to more than $700 million a year, and it has hired or continued employing about 1,000 Americans to support the emerging market.

But as that market has expanded, the bulk of Corning’s strengthened glass manufacturing has occurred at plants in Japan and Taiwan.

“Our customers are in Taiwan, Korea, Japan and China,” said James B. Flaws, Corning’s vice chairman and chief financial officer. “We could make the glass here, and then ship it by boat, but that takes 35 days. Or, we could ship it by air, but that’s 10 times as expensive. So we build our glass factories next door to assembly factories, and those are overseas.”

Corning was founded in America 161 years ago and its headquarters are still in upstate New York. Theoretically, the company could manufacture all its glass domestically. But it would “require a total overhaul in how the industry is structured,” Mr. Flaws said. “The consumer electronics business has become an Asian business. As an American, I worry about that, but there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Asia has become what the U.S. was for the last 40 years.”

Middle-Class Jobs Fade

The first time Eric Saragoza stepped into Apple’s manufacturing plant in Elk Grove, Calif., he felt as if he were entering an engineering wonderland.

It was 1995, and the facility near Sacramento employed more than 1,500 workers. It was a kaleidoscope of robotic arms, conveyor belts ferrying circuit boards and, eventually, candy-colored iMacs in various stages of assembly. Mr. Saragoza, an engineer, quickly moved up the plant’s ranks and joined an elite diagnostic team. His salary climbed to $50,000. He and his wife had three children. They bought a home with a pool.

“It felt like, finally, school was paying off,” he said. “I knew the world needed people who can build things.”

At the same time, however, the electronics industry was changing, and Apple — with products that were declining in popularity — was struggling to remake itself. One focus was improving manufacturing. A few years after Mr. Saragoza started his job, his bosses explained how the California plant stacked up against overseas factories: the cost, excluding the materials, of building a $1,500 computer in Elk Grove was $22 a machine. In Singapore, it was $6. In Taiwan, $4.85. Wages weren’t the major reason for the disparities. Rather it was costs like inventory and how long it took workers to finish a task.

“We were told we would have to do 12-hour days, and come in on Saturdays,” Mr. Saragoza said. “I had a family. I wanted to see my kids play soccer.”

Modernization has always caused some kinds of jobs to change or disappear. As the American economy transitioned from agriculture to manufacturing and then to other industries, farmers became steelworkers, and then salesmen and middle managers. These shifts have carried many economic benefits, and in general, with each progression, even unskilled workers received better wages and greater chances at upward mobility.

But in the last two decades, something more fundamental has changed, economists say. Midwage jobs started disappearing. Particularly among Americans without college degrees, today’s new jobs are disproportionately in service occupations — at restaurants or call centers, or as hospital attendants or temporary workers — that offer fewer opportunities for reaching the middle class.

Even Mr. Saragoza, with his college degree, was vulnerable to these trends. First, some of Elk Grove’s routine tasks were sent overseas. Mr. Saragoza didn’t mind. Then the robotics that made Apple a futuristic playground allowed executives to replace workers with machines. Some diagnostic engineering went to Singapore. Middle managers who oversaw the plant’s inventory were laid off because, suddenly, a few people with Internet connections were all that were needed.

Mr. Saragoza was too expensive for an unskilled position. He was also insufficiently credentialed for upper management. He was called into a small office in 2002 after a night shift, laid off and then escorted from the plant. He taught high school for a while, and then tried a return to technology. But Apple, which had helped anoint the region as “Silicon Valley North,” had by then converted much of the Elk Grove plant into an AppleCare call center, where new employees often earn $12 an hour.

There were employment prospects in Silicon Valley, but none of them panned out. “What they really want are 30-year-olds without children,” said Mr. Saragoza, who today is 48, and whose family now includes five of his own.

After a few months of looking for work, he started feeling desperate. Even teaching jobs had dried up. So he took a position with an electronics temp agency that had been hired by Apple to check returned iPhones and iPads before they were sent back to customers. Every day, Mr. Saragoza would drive to the building where he had once worked as an engineer, and for $10 an hour with no benefits, wipe thousands of glass screens and test audio ports by plugging in headphones.

Paydays for Apple

As Apple’s overseas operations and sales have expanded, its top employees have thrived. Last fiscal year, Apple’s revenue topped $108 billion, a sum larger than the combined state budgets of Michigan, New Jersey and Massachusetts. Since 2005, when the company’s stock split, share prices have risen from about $45 to more than $427.

Some of that wealth has gone to shareholders. Apple is among the most widely held stocks, and the rising share price has benefited millions of individual investors, 401(k)’sand pension plans. The bounty has also enriched Apple workers. Last fiscal year, in addition to their salaries, Apple’s employees and directors received stock worth $2 billion and exercised or vested stock and options worth an added $1.4 billion.

The biggest rewards, however, have often gone to Apple’s top employees. Mr. Cook, Apple’s chief, last year received stock grants — which vest over a 10-year period — that, at today’s share price, would be worth $427 million, and his salary was raised to $1.4 million. In 2010, Mr. Cook’s compensation package was valued at $59 million, according to Apple’s security filings.

A person close to Apple argued that the compensation received by Apple’s employees was fair, in part because the company had brought so much value to the nation and world. As the company has grown, it has expanded its domestic work force, including manufacturing jobs. Last year, Apple’s American work force grew by 8,000 people.

While other companies have sent call centers abroad, Apple has kept its centers in the United States. One source estimated that sales of Apple’s products have caused other companies to hire tens of thousands of Americans. FedEx and United Parcel Service, for instance, both say they have created American jobs because of the volume of Apple’s shipments, though neither would provide specific figures without permission from Apple, which the company declined to provide.

“We shouldn’t be criticized for using Chinese workers,” a current Apple executive said. “The U.S. has stopped producing people with the skills we need.”

What’s more, Apple sources say the company has created plenty of good American jobs inside its retail stores and among entrepreneurs selling iPhone and iPad applications.

After two months of testing iPads, Mr. Saragoza quit. The pay was so low that he was better off, he figured, spending those hours applying for other jobs. On a recent October evening, while Mr. Saragoza sat at his MacBook and submitted another round of résumés online, halfway around the world a woman arrived at her office. The worker, Lina Lin, is a project manager in Shenzhen, China, at PCH International, which contracts with Apple and other electronics companies to coordinate production of accessories, like the cases that protect the iPad’s glass screens. She is not an Apple employee. But Mrs. Lin is integral to Apple’s ability to deliver its products.

Mrs. Lin earns a bit less than what Mr. Saragoza was paid by Apple. She speaks fluent English, learned from watching television and in a Chinese university. She and her husband put a quarter of their salaries in the bank every month. They live in a 1,080-square-foot apartment, which they share with their in-laws and son.

“There are lots of jobs,” Mrs. Lin said. “Especially in Shenzhen.”

Innovation’s Losers

Toward the end of Mr. Obama’s dinner last year with Mr. Jobs and other Silicon Valley executives, as everyone stood to leave, a crowd of photo seekers formed around the president. A slightly smaller scrum gathered around Mr. Jobs. Rumors had spread that his illness had worsened, and some hoped for a photograph with him, perhaps for the last time.

Eventually, the orbits of the men overlapped. “I’m not worried about the country’s long-term future,” Mr. Jobs told Mr. Obama, according to one observer. “This country is insanely great. What I’m worried about is that we don’t talk enough about solutions.”

At dinner, for instance, the executives had suggested that the government should reform visa programs to help companies hire foreign engineers. Some had urged the president to give companies a “tax holiday” so they could bring back overseas profits which, they argued, would be used to create work. Mr. Jobs even suggested it might be possible, someday, to locate some of Apple’s skilled manufacturing in the United States if the government helped train more American engineers.

Economists debate the usefulness of those and other efforts, and note that a struggling economy is sometimes transformed by unexpected developments. The last time analysts wrung their hands about prolonged American unemployment, for instance, in the early 1980s, the Internet hardly existed. Few at the time would have guessed that a degree in graphic design was rapidly becoming a smart bet, while studying telephone repair a dead end.

What remains unknown, however, is whether the United States will be able to leverage tomorrow’s innovations into millions of jobs.

In the last decade, technological leaps in solar and wind energy, semiconductor fabrication and display technologies have created thousands of jobs. But while many of those industries started in America, much of the employment has occurred abroad. Companies have closed major facilities in the United States to reopen in China. By way of explanation, executives say they are competing with Apple for shareholders. If they cannot rival Apple’s growth and profit margins, they won’t survive.

“New middle-class jobs will eventually emerge,” said Lawrence Katz, a Harvard economist. “But will someone in his 40s have the skills for them? Or will he be bypassed for a new graduate and never find his way back into the middle class?”

The pace of innovation, say executives from a variety of industries, has been quickened by businessmen like Mr. Jobs. G.M. went as long as half a decade between major automobile redesigns. Apple, by comparison, has released five iPhones in four years, doubling the devices’ speed and memory while dropping the price that some consumers pay.

Before Mr. Obama and Mr. Jobs said goodbye, the Apple executive pulled an iPhone from his pocket to show off a new application — a driving game — with incredibly detailed graphics. The device reflected the soft glow of the room’s lights. The other executives, whose combined worth exceeded $69 billion, jostled for position to glance over his shoulder. The game, everyone agreed, was wonderful.

An article on Sunday about the reasons iPhones are largely produced overseas omitted a passage immediately after the second continuation, from Page A22 to Page A23, in one edition. The full passage should have read: “Another critical advantage for Apple was that China provided engineers at a scale the United States could not match. Apple’s executives had estimated that about 8,700 industrial engineers were needed to oversee and guide the 200,000 assembly-line workers eventually involved in manufacturing iPhones. The company’s analysts had forecast it would take as long as nine months to find that many qualified engineers in the United States.”

A version of this article appeared in print on January 22, 2012, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: How U.S. Lost Out On iPhone Work.